Another wonder of biodiversity

As you may know, there are more species living in tropical rain forests than anywhere else in the world. They make up less than 2% of the earth's surface (less than 6% of the earth's land mass).

• More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.
  
• More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforests. One-fifth of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin.
  
• At least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforest.
  
• A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe's rivers.
  
• A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees - a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America.
  
• More than 2,000 species of fish have been identified in the Amazon Basin - more species than in the entire Atlantic Ocean
  

While surfing the net, I stumbled upon this "ancient chinese remedy" called Dong Chong and some mumbo jumbo marketing video:

One of the active compounds comes from Cordyceps, a endoparasitic fungus that preys on insects. In fact, there are thousands of cordyceps species, each one "preying" on specific insect species. It is estimated that a square kilometer of rainforest harbors more than 30,000 different species of insect: imagine the whole ecosystem? Insects make up most of the macroscopic biodiversity on the planet. Parasites and predators are well established in such ecosystems to control populations, ensuring no one species is too common. Cordyceps fungi are a beautiful example, as you can see from these screenshots taken from BBC's planet Earth series. They (like many parasitic organisms) can alter the infected insect's behavior to make them climb higher or anything that might give the fungus an evolutionary advantage.